That Lump of Coal in Your Stocking?

It's a gift from the President and Congress. Look what I found on Inside Higher Ed while you were being festive. Billions were stripped from the final 2008 spending bill. Guess who's taking the hit?

Favorite Paragraph: "In addition, the budget reconciliation measure provides funds to increase the maximum Pell Grant by $490 in 2008. But to the dismay of college officials, Congressional Democrats, knowing that they had already delivered a significant increase in the program through the back door of mandatory funds, opted to provide only enough in discretionary money to set the maximum grant at $4,241, which represents a decrease from the 2007 level of $4,310, the first such cut in 15 years."

Inside Higher Ed also had a handy chart that shows the amounts of specific cuts.

Generation Next

OK so now we have babies, children, tweens, teens and (drum roll please) emerging adults! That’s what NPR is saying about you my 18 to 25 year old peep.

Money quote: "Recent studies find interesting differences among today's young people compared with those of decades past. There's even a new term for the generation age 18 to 25: Generation Next. And a new label for this period of development: "emerging adulthood."

Read and hear more.

So for the sake of the thought experiment I am willing to buy into this idea.
Here's my riff. In traditional societies (tribes) today's early teens could be fully functioning hunters and gatherers. As society became more complex we created adolescence. Now in the postmodern 21st century we're seeing this new longer span being created because the world is that much more complex.